


Bird in a Cage

by Empiricist



Category: WorthTheCandle - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:02:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27548023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Empiricist/pseuds/Empiricist
Summary: Spoilers for Worth the Candle up to chapter 93
Kudos: 2





	Bird in a Cage

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Worth the Candle up to chapter 93

Amaryllis Penndraig was stuck in a 400 square foot room, inside a sentient and frankly psychopathic house, nine miles down a nearly lightless pit, and she was having the time of her life.

From early on in her journey with Juniper, it had been obvious that Earth was significantly more technologically developed than Aerb, although magic made a direct comparison impossible. This technological gap occasionally showed itself when he would fail to understand something basic about society, like revulsion at boar bristle toothbrushes, or when he would mention offhand some technology that she found astounding and he found mundane. It occasionally gave her pause to consider, but without a knowledge of technology far exceeding what a high school student was taught or that Juniper was ever inspired to learn, it would only ever remain a curiosity and occasional barrier to Juniper’s integration into Aerb.

That was until two weeks ago, when the Dungeon Master had handed Juniper an entad of understated but astonishing importance.

Now, she had a very visceral understanding of what Earth had that Aerb lacked, and could see the results of what hundreds of years of advancement could have done for Aerb. Libraries stored on a wafer the size of a fingertip, entirely synthetic materials with amazing properties, medicine that nearly defied belief!

There were so many things that she could describe on a sheet of paper, bulk teleport to a handful of places on Aerb, and revolutionize significant parts of the world. Add some apparently cheap chemicals to salt and flour, and in a generation the world would scarcely remember the health crises that plagued millions of people. A new chemical shot, a checklist for diagnosing newborn health, a small change in how parents lay their children to sleep, and infant mortality could fall off a _cliff._

It was sometimes the case, in her brief stint as Special Liaison on Existential Emergencies, that she would be overwhelmed with the problems of the world. Birth rates falling, magics disappearing, cities getting erased from the map. This was all on top of being powerful enough to be faced with the problems of the world, to have the means to help some of the people some of the time, but never powerful enough to ignore the political opposition to her ideas, never enough to help everyone, or to really solve the issues plaguing her country.

Yes, those issues still existed. Nothing in the books she had available gave any answers to the exclusions, or to coordination problems, or to the numerous people who wanted her dead. It was very likely that many of the things mentioned in the books wouldn’t work for one reason or another.

But even if half of them failed, she could improve the quality of life for everyone on Aerb. By licensing and selling the huge library of knowledge at her fingertips, she could amass enough power to make real changes in the world. She would be able to privately finance so many of the obviously beneficial programs that somehow never gathered enough support to secure funding.

The advanced glass manufacturing alone could save thousands of people a year from death in car crashes, and make natal soul damnation substantially less likely. Plastic production was so influential on Earth that Juniper was barely even aware of the ways that people lived before it. She would have to consult with Grak, but warding seemed like it would be able to make any number of industrial processes economically viable on Aerb, even if Earth considered them obscure or impractical.

Amaryllis suddenly realized that she had read the same sentence multiple times without absorbing any of it, and she set the book down. She was too distracted by all the possibilities in her head. Best to move on to something else, and come back to her textbook on medicine when she could properly focus.

Once she had put the desk away, she brought out her yoga mat that she used for exercise and meditation. After a few minutes of getting situated and getting focused, she started paying attention to the flow of her blood. Originally taught as an exercise to tap into the blood flow control portion of blood magic, she had started using it as combined blood magic training and self care practice, an efficiency that pleased her. In such an isolated and cramped room, staying sane and productive was a necessity. Socialization was next to impossible, there were no long walks outside to be had, and the exercise she liked the most was severely limited (though the food was very good, if she said so herself).

As she shifted her focus along every limb, shifting the blood in her body to follow, Amaryllis considered what it would be like to be a multimage. If she got the same loyalty 20 virtue that Fenn got, she would immediately have access to more personal magical power than she had ever expected to get in her life, and with a high expectation of more to come. Going by the path in life her mother had laid out for her, Amaryllis would only ever have achieved a bare fraction of the power a true blood mage would wield. Useful, of course, but nothing exciting. A tool to be used when the time called for it, and almost never outside of it.

Gem magic enthused Amaryllis about as much as it did Juniper, and she didn’t look forward to the mental elements of velocity magic or the sensory aspect of water magic, but other than that? It was _exciting_ to think about being able to speed up her perception with bone magic, to shrug off bullets with still magic, to reverse time itself with revision magic, and all of this without the years of study normally required that grind down your enthusiasm for learning how to shape the universe with your will. And that was before considering the possibilities of the multiple, completely unknown magics. Would she be able to reorganize and search her memories with Library Magic? Would tree magic allow her to literally see the branching possibilities in front of her?

That last thought actually excited her enough to raise her heartbeat and disrupt the meditation. After a few moments to slow her heart and refocus on the task she had commit herself to, she got into the rhythm again, move the blood from one finger to the next, arm to leg, feel the blood circulating in her lungs, try to feel the blood flowing to the new embryo in her uterus. It was _nice_ to be able to take the time to slow down, relax, and work through the exercises she had set herself. Slowly, slowly, she felt herself chipping away at the stress the past few months had piled on top of her.

A few minutes later, she had done this cycle enough times to feel that she had made progress on her blood magic, if only marginally. At her current pace, she thought she could learn to redirect blood around a wound within a handful of months, though it would take longer still to do so while fighting as well. Picking herself up, she stretches a bit to loosen her joints, put the mat back into Sable, and now it was time for lunch.


End file.
